Saturday, June 14, 2008

1 Peter 1:17 “Live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.” If I live as a stranger on this earth I can expect to feel different from everyone who considers this their home. They’d be comfortable and I would not be. To the degree that I feel welcomed I am not a stranger. My home is not here, but I am on a journey toward it. I should expect to be misunderstood and misjudged. If I, an American female in NJ, suddenly moved to India everything would be different for me. Basics like food and climate would be readily observed. But other things like government processes, cultural norms, status of females, work styles and economy would be vastly different, too.If in this life I am a stranger, then many accepted customs should seem foreign to me. Drug use, crime, lack of respect for life, competition, definition of success are examples of such. None of these would be easily understood, more or less accepted in my personal life. If I “live my life as a stranger in reverent fear” then I live counter culturally. I don’t incorporate myself into those norms but rebel against them. My rebellion would take the form of life in an opposite style.Remember the prayer of St. Francis? Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is hatred, love. I wonder about how much of a stranger I am perceived to be. If my life evidences counter cultural practices I am living in reverent fear and I can expect to feel unwelcome.